Phoo Action

Oh.

Well this is pretty dreadful. When it comes to live action adaptations it's clearly apparent that poor Jaime Hewlett just can't find anyone to do his stream-of-consciousness fantasy cartoon world justice. IE this is, if anything, worse than that cringe-making cinematic embarrassment that was the Tank Girl movie. Something I would have thought impossible. But no, here it is moving right before my eyes – something far, far worse.

Everything is so stagy. Why are all the camera angles so flat and boring? The editing and cutting so drearily pedestrian. None of this depicts the manic energy of a Hewlett strip. And where did they find those two totally charisma-less lead actors from? In fact none of the other young actors can barely act at all – it's painful to watch. Not that matters too much when they've haven't got any decent dialogue to work with. There's no wit, no decent jokes, nothing. It isn't even up to the level of pantomime. I'm getting the sense that no one working on this show really had their heart in it. No one's putting that little bit extra into it to raise it above the mediocre.

The costumes of the Freebies are quite good. I suppose.

It's not as if it's impossible to do this low budget – high fantasy – highly imaginative comedy drama style – after all The Mighty Boosh have done exactly that and very successfully for four seasons now.

Actually what this show desperately needs is Joss Whedon lessons – it needs a bit of Buffy energy. Better fight scenes, better editing, better scripts, wit, glamour, – in short a complete overhaul. If it wasn't so geared to older teenagers and consequently had an adolescent sexuality to it meaning it can only be put on after the watershed – it should be shunted off to early morning CBBC where it can be quietly left to fade into a well deserved obscurity.

update:
I've just found out it was directed by Euros Lyn - of Doctor Who fame - he must be running on empty here. And written by Jessica Hynes - of Spaced. So it's doubly puzzling to me why it's so bad and so lackluster. But then again - maybe not. She seems to be better suited to writing gentler comedies now - like she did with her play 'Learners'. She should have been better writing this with her ex-comedy partner Simon Pegg who would have cranked up the jokes and the frenetic energy levels this show should have had.